Yes, that's what I think my social strategy needs, if not requires. I tend to be fairly focused in my social interactions - when I meet a new person, it doesn't take me very long to classify this potential new relationship into one of two categories. Yes, this looks promising. Or, no, I don't care about this at all. The second type I think we all have a lot of the time... people who put us off with a bad sense of humor, who have radically different opinions on things important to us, who carry themselves in a way we don't approve of, who don't seem to get us - in short, people we don't really like. That's quite simple, unless we are made to spend time with them, we can just cross them off the list immediately.

But the former kind of people, those who seem to have a lot of potential, are very tricky to pursue often. Even if a person does seem interesting and appealing, there are still many obstacles in the way of friendship. This is where circumstances can completely ruin the chances of this going anywhere. For instance, you may not have time to pursue this relationship, or even though you're fairly certain that this has potential the other person may not be, or they are not looking for any new friends right now, or well you get the idea. So there's a fairly big step going from just meeting someone and thinking they are worth pursuing, to getting to a point where both of you agree that you want this, to actually going anywhere with it. Now, sometimes you will get to "stage two" of that cycle and it will just never materialize, not for a lack of good will, but because of circumstances. This is very frustrating. By that time I will have invested myself emotionally into this and when it fails to go anywhere, I get quite disappointed. Miistake. This is where some cold blood could help.

Even though I have this binary classification system, it doesn't really reflect reality. I have a lot of relationships which are neither the zero nor the one, neither hopeless nor solid friendships. They are just in between, mostly promising relationships that stagnated at some point, or good relationships that faded, but not completely, just to a point where they are still useful. And so I'm starting to think that my approach is wrong. Instead of trying hard and getting disappointed when it doesn't work out, I should probably consider relationships more like a stock broker would handle stock. With a robotic disregard for individuals and just trying to maximize on investment at any given moment. Pursue any relationship of interest to the extent that the present situation allows, and at the same time accept loss with cold blood. Instead of making it a tick in the "loss" column and letting out a big sigh, I shouldn't even care, just move on to the next one. And maybe a week later try to revive the one that wasn't going well and see if it does better. No building, no long term concerns, just short term strategy.

Here we are again, this is familiar ground. Much too familiar, in fact. An escape from the strange country up north, where everything is on its head, sort of. Here I am, in the heart of Europe, in a cozy little town where the people are nice and the weather is currently making me feel like I'm on vacation. But in this strange and funny country, where I don't speak the language (yet slowly begin to understand), there is no escape, no escape from one self, even here. There was always a great hope in my heart that I would make this move and my life would change into everything I've wanted it to be. Well, maybe that hope was a little less idealistic than I just described it, nevertheless it was big. In some ways it is different here, some things have changed for the better (in fact I keep pondering blogging that sometime). But some things are the same.

It's not easy to blog with a heavy heart. I usually find it comfortable to blog when my head is clear and all I have in mind is some trivial thought which I try to spin in a way that makes it funny. But when I undertake a heavy thought, I often scrape the blog before I get halfway, too often it goes nowhere and the main idea gets completely lost. This may be one of these times, although I've taken a stand to finish this one, I feel the need to put it together.

I'm sure we all feel inadequate in many ways, but the biggest source of my lack of self esteem is not fulfilling my professional/academic obligations. So far in life I haven't worked much, so it revolves around school. I wish I knew why and how it all fits together, I've been over it enough times trying to figure it out. But I suppose it starts at some point with a feeling of enthusiasm about undertaking some piece of work. A thought of "oh this is interesting, I look forward to it". Then a time comes when the enthusiasm wanes, or rather some distraction comes into the foreground and the thought of working at the material is left for "later". I'm rather good at making time go by, I seem to find a way. Tv, movies, internet, where there's a will there's a way. Sometimes it's a feeling of accomplishment and "I got this under control" that triggers distraction mode. But the longer it goes on, the longer work pries on my mind, the more guilty I feel about not working, the less I want to get started. In everything I do I sort of intend to work but never get started. Days go by and I keep feeling bad about it. By now enthusiasm is a distant memory, I just feel a heavy burden. Once I hit distraction mode, there seems to be a treshold, past which point if it goes on for that long, I can keep it up indefinitely. How do I spend the time? It doesn't really matter, it's time wasted. It can go on for weeks sometimes, doing pretty much nothing at all. I usually have an idea of what my commitments are, when my deadlines are, I'm not completely disconnected from the world. But in these periods I gradually feel worse about myself, once I go into them I don't check my deadlines anymore, I don't want to think about it. My self esteem falls, I don't enjoy being around people. I don't want to face anyone, I feel inadequate and I feel vulnerable. In those times I usually fail to show up for a lot of things, I neglect people. Not that a lot of people depend on me, but if they did I would let them down. At some point I either recover, cut my losses and do some damage control or I just flat out fail, miss deadlines, fail exams, get really depressed.

It's been about 2 weeks since I did any work, I have deadlines coming up and here I am again.

Sometimes there an be more to an introduction than meets the eye. Or less. I have a nasty habit of tuning out *exactly* as the other person is telling me their name. I don't know why it happens, I get this brain freeze quite involuntarily. It's like I receive the information and then shut off immediately, no time to commit the information to short term memory, it falls between the cracks. I have no control over it, when I first meet a person I keep thinking about it "ok now don't tune out" and then 30 seconds later it happens anyway. Knowing a name isn't that big a deal, it's not like you have to start every sentence with their name, but it's a little tense cause you never know when you're going to need that information. So I tried to find out without asking, sometimes it takes a bit of time. When I moved into my new house, I met all the roommates and of course I missed one of the names. It took me 2 weeks to recover it.

But then there's the other side of the introduction and I've no idea what goes on there. For some reason, whenever I say my name, the other person repeats it as if to verify. As if I have such a complicated name.  :confused:

For some reason I'm never just on time for anything in life. I'm always either early or late, sometimes too early or too late. Appointments, classes, trains, flights. Too early. On my last flight, I was at the airport a whopping 2.5h in advance. For appointments and classes I'm often up to 15 minutes early, which is pointless because I end up walking around the block until it's time. Why am I early? I don't want to be late. When I'm late, I'm rarely just a little late (usually I take precaution and turn up too early as mentioned). When I don't, when something's come up or I've dropped the ball, I'm usually later than just late. Deadlines, exams. Too late. Not as a rule, but sometimes. If I'm not too late, I'm late. Not late to hand in something or show up, but late in starting. I've often studied for exams the night before. Of course I _planned_ to start 3 days in advance, but that always gets pushed back. The same with assignments, start late and rush to get it done on time. Do I ever start right on time? No. But sometimes I start early, get it done way before anyone else does. Then I rest on my laurels and start slacking. Then the next assingment comes along and I'm late. Hopefully not too late. But being on time isn't always as satisfying as one might think. 6 days ago 'we' celebrated Queens Day here in Utrecht. Well, more like they did, it didn't exactly phase me much. I planned to walk around town and take some pictures to document the event. Instead, I lingered around the house and by the time I stepped outside, it was 8pm. It turns out 8pm is too late to start celebrating Queens Day. By that time the town was filled with lots of garbage and orange banners *after* the people who had been there. Well there were still people about, but not many. Today is Liberation Day (yes, from World War 2). Resident Dutchman and All Round Expert Erik tracked down a celebration event in Utrecht for me to go to. Yes, he's a wizard with web searchees. The website even had a map and I thought "oh it's not far from here". I knew I was looking for a park, on the way I went into a supermarket to do some much needed restocking and having found no park, I thought "I don't want to carry this fruit around, it'll go bad". So I returned home. It was 4pm. I had planned to get to that park at 2.30. Well anyway. The stores here close at 6, so I thought I'd go shopping before it's too late, I needed some sandals. Later on, I felt like taking a walk in my new sandals, the event in the park was supposed to last until 10.30. Hell, why not. Turns out the park isn't nearby, it's a 25 minute walk. And I wouldn't have found it earlier cause it's much further than I thought it was. I get to the park, it's dark, there's a stage, a band playing music that isn't much to write home about, there are lots of booths selling beer and whatnot aaand lots of people. Although I was late by conventional standards, there were actually people on the way in so apparently I was right on time. I walk around the park, make sure I cover all the ground and I head home. Wasn't exactly much to see. But at least I wasn't too late. Yay.

I was going to a party tonight and you're 'supposed' to bring something. So I thought I would pick up a bottle of wine. Now, I'm totally the wrong person for this job, but since I wasn't going with anyone, I couldn't arrange it so that someone else would do it. See, I've actually bought alcohol maybe 10 times in my life. And that's amazing because I'm 24 and most people my age have been drunk more times in a month. So wine is no exception, I really have no idea what I'm doing. The only thing I know is too bitter is no good. When I enter the wine section of the supermarket, a section I otherwise never bother going into, I might as well be blindfolded trying to pin the tail on a donkey. So I just pick by labels, not by what they say but the way they look. Some bottles look really tacky with how the colors of the cork, the bottle and the label match. Some look more classy and I ended up picking a Bordeaux. Or at least that's what it claimed to be on the bottle, it was the one where half the bottles were missing, so I thought if people are buying this, maybe it's a good choice. It also happened to be among the cheapest they had, at €2.09. It doesn't cost much to get drunk in this country.

Although I was a bit late for the party, I came in as the very first guest. But since everyone brought drinks and this didn't turn out to be some drunken fiesta, noone actually touched any of the wine. Neither the one I got, nor the one that was already there, nor the ones that were brought in. They seemed a lot more interested in the beer.

*shrugs*